Professor helps with Iraq constitution, returns forever changed 1.9.2005
By Jared A. Favole

Soltan entered Iraq through eastern Turkey, bypassing two to three days of traffic at the border, because he was a guest of the Kurdistani government.

He spent three weeks in a Kurdish compound guarded by troops carrying AK-47s and one week in Baghdad.

Soltan was driving along the “Highway of Death,” just before reaching the compound in Kurdistan when he had his only close encounter with an attack. In two SUVs behind him, Kurdish troops hung out the rear windows carrying submachine guns.

As the armored vehicle Soltan was riding in approached a residential neighborhood, Soltan looked out the thick windows and saw a car speeding toward him.

Just before the intersection where the speeding car and Soltan’s SUV would collide, the car screeched to a stop.

“I thought he was planning an attack, but saw the guys in the back and realized he was outgunned,” Soltan said.

Despite the encounter, most of his time was spent discussing how a decentralized federal government, if included in the Iraqi constitution, would be best for Kurdistan.

Kurdistan — about the size of France and Texas combined — has been autonomous from Iraq since about 1991. The people, called Kurds, are mostly non-Arabic-speaking Sunni Muslims.

Deposed dictator Saddam Hussein razed Kurdish villages and deployed chemical weapons in 1988 that killed about 5,000 Kurds.

The Iraqi interim government presented the final draft of the constitution Aug. 28. It will be put to a national vote on Oct. 15.

If passed, Iraqis would hold a national election to vote in a permanent government.

If not, another interim government would have to be elected, and the constitutional process would start anew.

Soltan said regardless, “I would not be surprised at all if violence didn’t intensify.”

When the final draft was presented, Sunni Muslim leaders rejected it. Sunni Muslims are widely believed to be behind the insurgency that has all but sparked a civil war, something Soltan said he took into consideration when advising the Kurds.

“I felt I was speaking about what was good for Iraq, not just about what was good for Kurdistan,” he said.

After advising officials in Kurdistan for several weeks, a spur-of-the-moment decision to go to Baghdad followed, upsetting Soltan’s wife.

In Baghdad, Soltan was an official guest of Iraqi President Jalal Talabini. He stayed in the palace of a family member of Saddam.

“It’s more a mini-palace,” Soltan said when asked about its grandeur.

It had “ugly” decor suggestive of someone who tries to make themselves important, he described.

The food was good, but the bathroom was gaudy and lined in gold, he said.

Soltan said he wasn’t exposed to the culture of Iraq outside the palace and Kurdish compound. He only met one American soldier, who he said was hoping to be sent from a civilian job back to active patrolling.

On the one occasion he did leave the compound in Kurdistan, a well-dressed Kurdistani man approached him and said in broken English, “I love you very much.”

Soltan interpreted that as a “thank you” for America’s ousting Hussein.

Soltan said the key to success is political compromise. He views the constitution as a peace treaty that will help pre-empt a civil war; a means to a better end; a document that could be meaningless if not accepted Oct. 15.

He knows he came out of the trip a fan of the Kurds. He knows the future for Iraq is brittle and closer to civil war than America was as 13 separate colonies.

And he knows his influence in the political process was minimal.

“I think it changed me more than I changed it,” he said.

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